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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

I've been spending quite a bit of time interacting with the young-earth creationist community on Reddit and YouTube. It is closely related to flat-earth, though there is one significant difference: YEC is overtly religious, and specifically Christian. Other than that many of the forms of argument are the same. From that experience I have made two observations:

1. These people are not idiots (at least the YECs aren't, I can't speak for the flat-earthers) and to dismiss them as idiots who will just go away is a serious mistake. They are very good at presenting convincing-sounding arguments, and refuting them can actually be quite challenging.

2. The root of their reasoning is a tacit acceptance of teleology, which cannot be logically refuted. They approach existential questions with the assumption that there has to be some kind of point to existence, some transcendent meaning or purpose. If you accept this premise, then there is actually a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity and thence to the inerrancy of the Bible, and thence to YEC (and even a flat earth if you're really being intellectually honest!) A failure to appreciate this is IMHO one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements. A life without purpose makes no sense to these people, just as a theory at odds with the data makes no sense to someone with a scientific mindset. So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does) then, on their world-view, science must be wrong, full stop. No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise.

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Inerrancy is a whole other bag of chips. I teach a Sunday School class and one of my big topics is man made rules that aren’t Biblically supported.

Inerrancy falls in that camp from my reading. There’s a single verse that the basis for the entire doctrine.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

This verse is interpreted to mean that it is inerrant. There’s a wide gap between inerrant and useful for teaching from my own reading. There are many people wiser than me who disagree on the subject.

My own interpretation is simply that Jesus constantly spoke in metaphor because it was more useful for teaching. Why would we assume that the creation of everything, that involves so many intricate details, would be any different? Would we expect books on microbiology and geology to accompany Genesis?

Of course not. Genesis, Revelation and Job are 3 books of the Bible that don’t document events as observed. I believe (not 100%) that all the rest do.

Bookenders as I call them, people who only want to argue about Genesis and Revelation, are a concern because they take away from the real message to pursue an argument that nobody can win. It’s not productive and it’s not useful.

If everyone was convinced that the earth was or wasn’t 6,000 years old tomorrow it wouldn’t change a single facet of life on earth for anyone. It would only remove one argument. IMO, that makes it a pointless subject to debate and only creates friction.

Romans 14 is pretty clear about this too.

https://www.biblehub.com/niv/romans/14.htm

But of course, that interpretation of 2 Timothy is a post hoc defense of biblical inerrancy. There are much more obvious reasons for religious authorities to emphasize the absolute authority of religious scriptures (particularly when they also claim exclusive authority to interpret those scriptures).

It's also important to note that "inerrancy" means very different things to different people. I remember one evangelical preacher who informally explained it as essentially "God made sure that nothing got into the scripture that he didn't want in the scripture," which is a much weaker claim and is essentially synonymous with what it means for something to be scripture.

> Of course not. Genesis, Revelation and Job are 3 books of the Bible that don’t document events as observed. I believe (not 100%) that all the rest do.

The Book of Ezekiel has a lot of pretty wild stuff, but I guess you can say it's supposedly documenting Ezekiel's visions (but isn't that also true of The Revelation?). The Book of Daniel is also apocalyptic literature, much of which was likely not intended to be read as a document of observed events. There's also a ton of poetry (Psalms, Proverbs, etc.) that I wouldn't consider "documents of events as observed."

Psalms and Proverbs are published record essentially. I meant more “written by the people who experienced the events.”

Prophecy falls into that camp. Much of the Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled by Jesus himself though.

Unfulfilled prophecy is tougher.

I generally refer to Bookenders as people who focus on creation and the end of the world.

The message is everything in between and fascinating.

The problem seems to me more fundamental than that: if the Bible potentially contains errors then you need some process or mechanism to figure out what those errors are if you're going to use the Bible as a guide to action. What could that process or mechanism possibly be? It obviously can't be the Bible.

The Bible is a collection of books though. Taken one verse at a time, out of context, errors with interpretation are easy. Context is huge.

That’s really the root of it. If you read the entire Bible, you’ll see common themes that are reiterated over and over. You’ll see patterns of human behavior that haven’t changed in thousands of years.

Reading the entire Bible provides so much more context. There’s not nearly as much left up to discussion after that because you’ll have a much better understanding of e everything.

I mean, nobody talks about it but one of the biggest themes of the entire Old Testament is idolatry. We think about that today as worshiping gold statues but it’s just as easy to frame in terms of political parties, our own anger and biases, etc.

Another is the dangers of pride.

You may enjoy some of Pete Enns' books. Namely "The Bible Tells Me So", Which dives into biblical inaccuracy head first. It's not a "Oh well, if you apply some mental gymnast it's okay" book. It's "Here's a bunch of reasons inerrancy makes zero sense and here is why that's okay and doesn't mean God isn't real".

You may be interested in a detailed breakdown of authorship of various parts of the Bible [0]. In summary, to a first approximation, only the books written during the Babylonian Exile and during the preaching of Peter and Paul were written during the events that they describe, and most other books were written much later. The Gospels are decades after Jesus' life and death, and all of the Bronze Age stories are set centuries before they were recorded.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Bible

It’s still not a good explanation to say “humans must have some purpose, therefore this one very specific made-up thing must be true.” What about all the other made-up things which also purport to explain the purpose of humans?

Explanations of this form are extremely easy to vary, which is why they are not good explanations.

But that only matters if you think that explanations are what matters. That is an assumption. That's the whole point: some people value purpose more than they value explanation.

> That's the whole point: some people value purpose more than they value explanation.

Sure, but I don't think the debate is over whether creationists derive a sense of purpose from their beliefs. I have no doubt that they do. You'd never need to discuss things like fossils or evolution or cosmology to determine whether one derives a sense of purpose from one's beliefs.

My assumption was that these debates are about the epistemological status of these claims, which is largely independent of whether one derives a sense of purpose.

Yes, you're right. But by the time you get around to arguing about fossils your thought processes have already diverged beyond reconciliation. It's not because either of you are idiots, it's because you started from different foundational assumptions.

That may very well be true, but making arguments that conceal your true world view or "axioms" is intellectually dishonest.

I've never encountered a YEC who concealed their foundational belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. In fact, if you watch Kent Hovind, he opens every single video he makes with, "I believe that the Bible is true and scientifically accurate." If you're going to lob charges of intellectual dishonesty you should be very careful that you're not living in a glass house.

> In fact, if you watch Kent Hovind, he opens every single video he makes with, "I believe that the Bible is true and scientifically accurate."

If you're spending lots of effort making what appear to be good-faith arguments toward some conclusion, but that conclusion is in fact an axiom that you hold, then that's intellectually dishonest. If "Bible is true and scientifically accurate" is one of your axioms, then it's intellectually dishonest to provide some supposed piece of evidence that supports this claim (e.g. supposed missing links in the fossil record), because by definition 1) no evidence is necessary to support an axiomatic claim and 2) no evidence or explanation can possibly change your mind.

The axiom is that the Bible is true. The conclusion is that evolution is false. The arguments are about how to reconcile the "fact" that evolution is false with the existence of data that appear at first glance to support its truth.

Now, I am not going to defend Kent Hovind's intellectual honesty. I think he does have a not-so-hidden ulterior motive (tax evasion). But you cannot legitimately accuse him -- or any YEC that I've encountered -- of trying to paper over the fact that he assumes the truth of the Bible.

> The axiom is that the Bible is true. The conclusion is that evolution is false. The arguments are about how to reconcile the "fact" that evolution is false with the existence of data that appear at first glance to support its truth.

But there is no intellectually honest way to reconcile that factual claim except to reiterate that it is an axiom (or, if you like, a trivial corollary from the axiom that the Bible is true). The supposed existence of missing links is completely irrelevant, because even if those links weren't missing, his conclusion would be that evolution is false. Ancient flood myths are completely irrelevant, because even if such myths weren't widespread, his conclusion would be that evolution is false.

To clarify, I'm not claiming that creationists conceal their beliefs about the Bible. I'm referring to intellectual dishonesty.

In a different fashion, I found myself physically surrounded by YECs at a job many years ago. It was a surreal experience. They definitely aren't idiots, many were among the best I've seen at technical work.

But like you said in (2), they start with different assumptions. Their logic is totally sound if you agree with the assumptions. I spent some time reading and watching YEC material to have a better understanding of their positions. While there were certainly some really stupid arguments, most were sound but based on either an assumption of the existence of God (unprovable either way) and some implications of that, or a flawed understanding of physics/chemistry/biology. The latter were the only arguments that could be refuted because they were the only ones where you could point out the specific flaw in reasoning.

Until you find the difference in assumptions, you can't effectively argue against their position. And, then, only by talking about the assumptions and not the conclusions/implications.

This gets to one of the big issues.

A lot of these beliefs arise from very fundamental axioms of belief that only show up through these high-order belief systems.

If you fundamentally believe you should follow the evidence no matter what and THAT is the highest priority of your belief, then you are (more likely) going to fall into the camps of hard science and nothing but the science.

Or perhaps in a different vein, do you fundamentally believe you are a good person fighting evil? Then anyone who disagrees is THE ENEMY and must be DESTROYED. And not only are they doing bad things, but they are fundamentally BAD PEOPLE. They're not just baby killers, they're Satanic Baby Killers.

Of course, we are all a vibrant mix of these beliefs, and some may change over time with enough exposure. And many often hold beliefs counter to other base axioms and a careful walk may help expose and nudge their higher-order beliefs. But recognizing that it isn't just about Evolution or just about the world being flat, it's actually built on layers and layers of logic from very low-fundamental beliefs is key.

Because even if you prune some of the top facts, the base layers will remain, and they'll adapt to stay aligned with their core beliefs.

At one time I flirted with the YEC point of view as a Christian. What helped me change both (I'm an atheist now) was exposure to more points of view and modest experiments applying biblical teachings personally. After years of twisting logic I could no longer justify the magical thinking. Because none of the experiments were convincing. (Don't forget that God can't be tested! Except when it comes to donating to his chosen leaders.)

And within the Christian communities I saw so much harm from the various biases and non-critical methods it was heart breaking. Sadly it can still be hard to leave when you're taught you're choosing pleasure, hell fire, selfishness, and abandoning absolute truth and love.

> So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does)

How does it lead to that? I feel like that's a false assumption that many people make, religious or not.

Do you have a theory of purpose that is consistent with the laws of physics? Because that would be a major breakthrough. All of the evidence (AFAICT) indicates that nature is utterly indifferent to our existence.

Nature may be indifferent to our existence, but we are not indifferent to nature. How is this?

Science leads you to the conclusion that we are here as the result of a series of chance events. Not because of any "decision" to put us here. If we're all just here by fluke, and when we're gone we're gone entirely and completely, what transcendence could there be?

How does science exclude the possibility of a decision to put us here? It seems to me that science (paired with a good bunch of epistemological assumptions) gives us the laws our universe follows. But as for why such laws are like that, or who possibly decided them and with which purpose, I'd say such questions do not even make sense for science.

Science can only "lead" you to that conclusion if you already think in specific philosophical ways. In this case it sounds like you are presuming materialism.

You put into very readable language what I have felt to be true for some time.

What I appreciate about your comment also is you mention the necessity to understand their presuppositions and reason that way (at least sometimes). I feel like the issue with many discourses going on right now is a lack of good faith understanding of the other "sides" presuppositions.

And yet, it can be so painful for someone to even pretend they can identify with the following belief for example this belief

> So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does) then, on their world-view, science must be wrong, full stop

The much easier tact for lets say a standard pro-science metropolitan is to decide the YEC-er person actually knows what is "true" (e.g. what the metropolitan thinks is obvious) but is actively choosing to do wrong. Then you can refute their point as purposely provoking _and_ also put them in the "bad people" box with one little mental facade.

I'm not trying to build a purposely weak example of either group, I think all humans have a simplifying mechanism when it comes to viewpoints/ideas and that we need that to survive in some sense- and that we do it all the time probably in benign ways. But acknowledging what other people believe is a great skill to build I think.

I can't really find any word for "No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise." than "idiot". They may be able to constrain their idiocy to certain domains -- after all the early history of the planet (whether 5,000 or 5 billion years ago) has no real effect on your daily life.

But in my experience, it nonetheless creeps out to affect other areas of their life. YECs are often afflicted with other conspiracy theories, not just flat earthers but also climate denialsm, and these days, COVID denialism.

I find that the assumption isn't so much the teleology as the group superiority. It's not so much that the Bible is inerrant as that they are the ones who hold the truth, and those who disagree must in all cases be wrong -- and not merely wrong, but out to get them. The appeal to teleology is more about literal divine right, that "God shed his grace on thee". That leads them to make alliance with those who don't accept young-earth creationism but nonetheless share their nationalistic, chauvinist, xenophobic aims.

> I can't really find any word for "No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise." than "idiot".

That's because you find the data persuasive. They don't. That in and of itself does not make them idiots.

It's not just that I find the data persuasive, but that I find data persuasive. They don't. They reject the notion of data when it doesn't suit them.

That makes them not merely wrong, but dangerous to me. They will go out of their way to make my life worse, without being able to judge the cost to themselves. Regardless of what derogatory name I choose to call it, our outlook is fundamentally at odds. They've shown repeatedly that they wish to use it to harm me, and my names for them are going to be negative.

Look, I'm on your side. I agree that YECs are both wrong and dangerous. My point here is that you cannot effectively oppose them on those grounds. They believe that you are wrong and dangerous, so the situation is symmetric. A mere belief that the opposition is wrong and dangerous cannot prevail on its own.

True. It just illustrates how deep a problem we've got here: once you've gone down the rabbit hole, there's no way back.

The only solution, if any, is democratic: containing the damage and reducing the numbers. They cannot be persuaded, but other people can. And unfortunately, I don't think that's all that effective, either -- in part because they ally themselves with other conspiracy theorists who insulate them from some of the consequences of their actions. They may not agree, but don't attack each other, and bolster common causes. Enough to win elections, especially when geographic, demographic, and historic quirks assign more political power to some regions than others.

If it were just creationists, they'd be (relatively) harmless kooks. As it is, they're always a step away from theocracy.

Well, epistemologically, there is a big difference between YEC and flat-earth.

Flat earth can be confidently debunked in quite a large number of ways, including direct experience.

YEC is, at its core, fundementally undisprovable. There really no way to prove that the universe wasn't recently created by some force with a consistent apparent history. Indeed, there are philosophers who have made strong arguments that we live in a simulation which makes such a "created with history" scenario seem more plausible.

> If you accept this premise, then there is actually a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity

I rather doubt that. You may be able to show that some of these beliefs are logically consistent given that premise, but that is a far cry from showing that they are logically derivable from that premise as you seem to be saying.

I do think there is data that will persuade these people, but nobody is willing to out the time and effort in to do so. (Since these are quite divergent beliefs, any education program would probably need to be customized on a per person basis.)

So, they are idiots. If no logic can change their minds then isn’t dismissing them as idiots the best course of action?

Take the parallel postulate. It holds in Euclidean geometry but not in others. Am I an idiot for not using that postulate (and its implications)? No, I'm starting from a different set of assumptions than someone studying Euclidean geometry. As a consequence I'll reach different conclusions than someone studying Euclidean geometry.

Neither of us are idiots, we both know what we're doing. The conflict is when I make an assertion about geometry (general) that doesn't hold for geometry (Euclidean) (or the reverse, the other person makes a general assertion that doesn't hold for non-Euclidean geometry). Unless we sit down and compare our base assumptions (axioms), we cannot resolve this apparent conflict.

I'm not saying this is universally the case, there are contrarian trolls and idiots out there, but oftentimes people are reasonably rational but are starting from different positions. This leads to conflicts in politics, economics, religion, and, yes, the understanding of the physical world. It's not helpful to call them all idiots because many times they aren't, they just have different base assumptions (or priorities, often, in the case of politics and economics). And calling them idiots only leads to an emotional, not rational, "discussion". Take a step back, don't be a jerk, and listen to them, work backward to the actual point of disagreement and then focus on it (or not, once discovered you may realize there is no resolution that will satisfy either or both of you).

You have completely missed the point. Their argument is logical. It just starts from a different foundational assumption.

In math we have an proof technique called reductio ad absurdum that deals with this situation. They seem to be doing it wrong though, because they don't reject the faulty hypothesis after the conclusion is logically inconsistent with reality.

I can apply the same argument to science: all of the laws of physics are symmetric with respect to time and space. But all of the data I have direct access to comes to me from a privileged frame of reference that I call "here and now". Therefore, all of this data is in direct conflict with physics, and so physics must be wrong.

Everything starts with an assumption. However, in science, if the assumption's conclusion doesn't match the observed evidence, we reject our assumption as true, and we start with a new assumption.

As so, science doesn't have a "foundational" assumption (because it's willing to change its assumptions). Rather, science subjects assumptions to evidence - not the other way around...

> science doesn't have a "foundational" assumption

Yes, it does: it assumes that evidence is a reliable guide to truth.

Nonsense.

"evidence" and "truth" are very semantically related. By semantics, "evidence is a reliable guide to truth" is not nearly an assumption... as it is a logical definition.

It's a bit like saying: "it assumes reddish color indicates red".

EDIT: "Reliable" is the problem word here. Remove it from your statement, and it certainly is no longer an assumption. That said, I don't see where science inherently makes the assumption that evidence is reliable...

> it is nearly a logical definition.

Your having to hedge with "nearly" is an indication of the weakness of your position.

First, there is no such thing as a "logical definition". There are only definitions. Perhaps you meant "logical tautology" but in fact the idea that evidence is a reliable guide to truth is neither a definition nor a tautology, it is an assumption. And it is an assumption that is open to reasonable doubt. To wit:

> it assumes reddish color indicates red

It is far from clear that this is true. What does "reddish color" even mean? How can you define it without begging the question? How do you know that your subjective perception of "reddish color" is the same as mine?

A better example: solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space. So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false.

It's important to understand that definitions are not assumptions. Definitions and assumptions are two different things. Now, we could also define them to be the same thing if we wanted, but typically definitions aren't about truth. They're about meaning.

Now, if you'd rather use "logical tautology" that's fine by mean. It's close to what I meant. "Evidence" and "Truth" are very semantically related... so much that your statement earlier is almost a definition, not an assumption. By definition, Evidence is something that indicates truth. Again I think the word reliable does make the statement an assumption. But again, I don't see where science ever made the assumption that evidence is reliable...

As for your second example, it is not much better. I will again attempt to show you the problem with your argument.

>solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space. So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false

For your argument to hold, your definition of solid in your second statement must be incongruent. I'll try to show how.

> solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space

Here you've tacked on some definition to the word solid. That added definition being: "they are mostly empty space". Now let's look at your next statement

>So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false

This only logically true if you use two different definitions of the word solid. Otherwise your statement is nonsense, when substituting your implied definition of solid:

something that appears as not empty, but is in actually mostly empty space appearance indicates something that appears as not empty, but is in actually mostly empty space is actually false

This is part of why I go directly for discrediting the Bible as part of my refutation. There's no point in letting folks shelter themselves behind the delusion that the Bible is historically accurate enough to be useful for scientific predictions. We should be willing to crack open those religious beliefs, and not let them hide behind some sort of special motte-and-bailey construction just for the sole purpose of making bogus historical/cosmological/etc. claims.

I just don't get this at all. Could you explain how they refute things like ISS camera footage showing a clearly round earth with the station going around it? Are you saying that they just refute science outright because it conflicts with their teleology beliefs? If that is the case, they actually are idiots, regardless of how erudite their arguments may be.

Young Earth Creationism isn’t the same as Flat Earth.

An argument I’ve heard before is that God made the universe relatively recently (10k years ago or so) but with the appearance of age. Something like God “fast forwarded” through time to skip to the part where humans started recording history. In that theory both the majority of modern science and a strangely literal interpretation of the Bible can both be true at the same time. The scientists are unable to measure that God “fast-forwarded” the universe because he didn’t leave any evidence of it.

In my experience the majority of Christians don’t hold that view, but instead see Genesis as metaphorical, and thus it actually fits in rather well with the current Big Bang model. So well, in fact, that early on a lot of scientists rejected the Big Bang as “creationist rubbish.”

They say it's CGI and dismiss it

YEC is not closely related to Flat earthers. I know many YEC that refute flat earth theory completely. The overlap of the two is small, but maybe there are a few outspoken ones on Reddit (it’s always the outspoken ones isn’t it?)

Just a hunch, but I think the correlation of flat earthers to schizophrenia is a thousand times stronger than any other.

They are more closely related than you think. Flat-earth is actually a natural conclusion from the assumption of Biblical inerrancy (e.g. 1Sm2:8, Mat4:8, Isa11:12).

Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?

I'm not a YE but I am a thinking Christian. You can imagine this sort of thinking as a game of 20 questions, where you ask a series of questions to try to "home in" on what kind of worldview you think is likely.

So the first question is, "Is there something besides the physical world -- besides atoms and energy and time?" If you say "yes", then you've ruled out materialism (which some people confuse with science).

There are a number of things in our human experience which (in my opinion) are inconsistent with a materialistic worldview. The sense of meaning and purpose is one. Morality is another. (Not trying to argue this here, just trying to answer the question.)

Then you can say, OK, but that could be Buddhism or Shintoism or Islam or anything. So the next set of questions might filter out reincarnation-style religions and get you down to the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam); and then you might look specifically at evidence about Jesus' resurrection.

Not all Christians are Young Earthers; and Young Earthers are certainly not Flat Earthers. But there is this similarity: Christianity gives people something that atheism and materialism do not. And so when modern atheists say, "Belief in evolution is incompatible with belief in God -- you have to choose one or the other", then a lot of people will say, "Well if I have to choose, I'm going with God."

That is a very good question, and the answer is very long, much too long for an HN comment. But there IS an answer. (There is of course an answer for all other religions as well.)

Don't leave us hanging! Where can we learn the answer?

Any Christian apologetics web site. Or your local church.

I was hoping for something more precise tbh. Christian apologetics web sites and local churches also offer answers to lots of questions I don't care about, so if you already sifted through them, I was hoping you could share that advantage with the broader public.

Try searching for "why Christianity".

I broke my rule of ignoring people who bait and don't deliver and did a quick search. All 4 results from the 1st search page:

- https://www.livingwaters.com/why-christianity/ seems to short-circuit back into "god-given rule"

- https://carm.org/atheism/why-believe-christianity-over-all-o... assumes the Bible as a historical source of truth

- http://www.gospeloutreach.net/whychristianity.html - quotes beauty not present in atheism, otherwise Bible as a historical source

- https://creation.com/why-christianity says Christianity correctly diagnoses a humanity's fault (moral inconsistency), and then declares it superior because of which solution it chooses

They don't seem to answer "why is Christianity the source of meaning", but rather "why choose Christianity as religion", which is a different question, so I might have misrepresented them. Either way, none of them seem very logically conclusive to me.

> They don't seem to answer "why is Christianity the source of meaning", but rather "why choose Christianity as religion"

That's right. The original question was:

> Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?

If you want to know "why is Christianity the source of meaning" that's an easier question to answer: it's because the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent Creator of the Universe loves you, and will give you everlasting life in paradise conditioned only on your acceptance of His sacrifice on the cross. Or something like that.

I think that's not actually the point that was made by cma (and my paraphrased question was imprecise).

"Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?" presumes starting with no preferred solution: "existence has a meaning. Who discovered it?". It's much more interesting than "Christianity says existence has a meaning. What makes it right?"

> existence has a meaning. Who discovered it?

If you're looking for the Christian answer to this, it is: no one discovered it. The meaning of life is not discoverable knowledge. It is instead revealed by God.

It doesn't. But trying to convince them to abandon Christian literalism would require an alternative that satisfies this need for purpose.

It doesn't, necessarily. But it's a part of that overall argument.

Because they come to the discussion wearing a filter that tells them that some things are Truth and other things are Heresy: notably, that stories from their culture are True and cannot even be compared to stories from other cultures, because that is Heresy.

So the appropriate argument is to ask why we shouldn't be sun worshipers instead?

It seems my short statement has been taken by some to be flippant rather than serious, it's not.

In history there have been thousands of religions with various beliefs, many of which ascribed purpose to the actions of believers which was considered significant how specifically does the purpose given to those who follow Christianity provide "a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity and thence to the inerrancy of the Bible" over any one of those other religions?

And if every religion gains equal weight then why not follow all of them equally using that same rationale?

I mean I don't particularly care what people believe, but that's a pretty strong statement.

> one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements

It depends on the country. These movements are non - existant in France for instance. When we hear of them or is usually about the ones in the US (I do not think I heard about another country).

When we hear of them it is because something happened (the death of one of the leaders who blew up in his rocket IIRC), never because we have a hard time resisting them.

Out of curiosity I search in French for flat earth. All the hits are about the US (and sometimes UK) based movement.

This is the same for the young earth one, and creationism generally speaking.

But fear not, we have homeopathy as a national sport (and plenty of other alternative "medicine", taken seriously here)

> These movements are non - existant in France

I think they exist but just have a different flavor. In the U.S. we have Christian extremists, in France you have Muslim extremists.

Sure, there are religious extremists (and we painfully felt it ove the terrorist attacks).

I was talking about either flat earth, or the idea that earth is young. These are concepts which are completely foreign to France and not even carried by the religious extremists (maybe someone is telling this, but they have zero traction).

Specifically, I was commenting on

> one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements

It's fine to come up with some magician who created our world and is looking at us through his/her terrarium, if that makes you feel warm and cosy. It's a whole other level to claim the world is flat and/or just a couple of thousand yours old. Than you're just an idiot.

I'm not sure there is really a big difference if you accept this magician then you usually also accept impossible things..

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